By Rickey Singh

From Trinidad Express

International warehouse shopping company PriceSmart, which operates

In various Caribbean Community (Caricom) states, is under sharp criticisms for now involving Cuba’s diplomatic missions in the region in the more than half-century of America’s trade, economic and financial blockade of that Caribbean nation.

Immediately affected Cuban missions include Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago where accredited diplo­mats, their families and staff have been informed by PriceSmart management of the suspension of business accounts after being advised by the parent company of possible violations of the US embargo in transacting business with Cubans without “permanent residency” in countries of their operations.

In a mixture of hilarity and strong warning, current Caricom chairman Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gonsalves said in a telephone interview yesterday that the US government should be “mindful of the implications of PriceSmart’s action”.

He pointed out while at first, he could not resist “laughing at this infantile political move”, he was never­theless mindful that PriceSmart is incorporated into the laws of sovereign Caribbean states, and now engaging in “unnecessary, unprovoked acts” against Cuba’s diplomatic personnel and other Cuban nationals who are working in various regional sectors, including doctors and nurses.

The Vincentian prime minister said neither the US government nor owners and operators of corporate enterprises like PriceSmart could be unmindful of the historic role initially played by Caricom countries to bring Cuba out of the “diplomatic isolation” to which the US economic embargo had assigned it, following its Fidel Castro-led 1959 revolution.

Further, of the community’s continuing involve­ment with the rest of the international community, minus the miniscule exception of three, in passage year after year, resolutions denouncing the “archaic law” governing the embargo which has “miserably failed to destabilise” the government in Havana or to “quench the revolution­ary spirit of the Cuban people…”.

‘Criminal act’

Criticisms of PriceSmart’s suspension of bus­iness accounts for Cubans have come from Cuba’s embassies in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago,

headed respectively by ambassadors Bernardo Guanche Hernandez, Lis­ette

Perez Perez and Guit­termo Vazquez Moreno.

For ambassador Hernandez, the decision by PriceSmart constituted “a criminal act, based on an anachronistic law” which violates the Vienna convention.

In Barbados, ambassador Perez disclosed a representative of the local PriceSmart turned up to inform the embassy about the suspension of business transactions while, he explained, they invest “effort, time and resources” in pursuing lawful channels in the US which “may enable us to reactivate those accounts…”.

The resident Cuban diplomatic missions in Barbados, Jamaica, and

Trinidad and Tobago have pointed to “unnecessary inconveniences” to non-embassy staff like Cuban doctors and teachers.

According to ambassador Perez, there seems to be an “underlying intention to encourage defections” by Cubans, in favour of having permanent resident status that would enable them to do “membership business” with PriceSmart.

“This is the sort of contempt by those”, she said, “who do not really understand what the Cuban revolution and Cuban patriotism mean for us…”.

Ironically, the move by PriceSmart to suspend business transactions with Cuban diplomatic missions and Cubans who do not have permanent working status in Caricom states came against the backdrop of approval last month by the Cuban National Assembly of a ground-breaking foreign-investment law to encourage a new “development partnership” that would be exten­ded also to overseas-based Cubans.

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